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Darren Wright said:
Got things leveled out, weed mat down, and the cages lined up where they need to be.
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The deck stairs will be moving to align with the opening below. The deck stairs will come down to a concrete pad, then probably concrete stairs to the parking area.
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Good progress. Do you have a source of stone close by, as in, tractor driving distance?
I’m collecting two foot stone for a retaining wall here and the best picking is a rock pile at the back of the orchard across our fairly busy road, so I have to choose my times. Early Sunday mornings are good, all those knuckleheads with the crappy little cars/loud exhaust are still passed out. 👍
 
Ahh, So that's how you're using the cages. Out here I see neighbors using them as heavy duty fence posts, since digging holes can be challenging in the rocks we have. Plenty of rocks to fill a cage though.
 
So the first basket was rocks entirely out of the yard, the next two are about a bucket load each from the creek. I am mostly hand loading at the creek since I don’t have a rock bucket, I’d end up with way too much sand and weeds.
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I’ve learned to start filling up on both sides of the partition, as it will start to bend with the weight of the rocks.

I only spent a couple hours on these today. My wife and I spent a lot of time cleaning up around the yard mostly today.
 
I haven’t done much more rock since the creeks have been flooded or high. I did do some backfill behind the cages that are filled. Tonight I laid out and cut forms for the concrete stairs.
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There will be a pad that extends under the new deck stairs to support them. I need to remove the temporary stairs and dig out for the pad. I’ll reuse the temporary stairs stringers and make two more as they are the dimensions I need. Them to be
 
This morning I pulled the old concrete mixer out of the barn. Upon inspection the motor was spinning smoothly, but the cord was another story.
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I popped the old cord off and swapped it with a new one. Once I was able to verify it worked, I tied in a power switch.

After getting the mixer running I headed to town and picked up twenty 80lb bags of concrete.

I got back and removed the stairs from the deck, and finished framing out for the pad at the top, then the mixing and pouring began.
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And I know what you’re thinking, that isn’t rebar, and no it isn’t. I totally forgot to get it. So we have a dozen less electric fence posts around here. ;)
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I got it all poured in two hours, but took about 4 to do the final finishing.
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Of course after 3 or 4 repairs I finally learned to stop chasing the cats off of it, as soon as I would get on to them they’d leap from the very spot leaving four deep paw prints, but up to the point hadn’t left a mark. :p
 
Took the forms off this morning, and only had a small spot that didn’t get all the bubbles out on the ledge of one of the steps, but mostly a cosmetic issue, not worth patching. I had to cut about 1 1/2” off each of the temporary stair stringers to get all the steps even.
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I still need to put a hand rail in on the concrete steps, and some safety rail where the stairs were. The deck stairs and railing are temporary.
 
Darren Wright said:
...Of course after 3 or 4 repairs I finally learned to stop chasing the cats off of it, as soon as I would get on to them they’d leap from the very spot leaving four deep paw prints, but up to the point hadn’t left a mark. :p
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Years ago one of the concrete contractors that I worked with told me about a large sidewalk job he had in a fairly rough neighborhood (I don't recall what town in NM), and the local kids kept putting their initials and hand prints in the slabs every afternoon after the crews would leave for the day. The city was making him replace all the defaced slabs, and it was starting to cost him a lot of money and time. Finally, he found out who the "ringleader" of the neighborhood gang was and he made a proposal to him: Get the kids to leave my sidewalks alone, and I'll build you all a basketball court on that vacant lot over there, and all the kids can leave names, hand prints, or whatever they want on the slab. The ringleader agreed, and the contractor got the court poured a few days later. That was the end of the sidewalk vandalism, too. He ended up not making much profit on that job, but he came out better than losing money replacing sidewalk slabs.

Maybe you should see if your cats like playing basketball? 🤣
 
Tore out the Formica counters we got a few months back. I didn’t really check to see if they were out of square or it is the walls, guessing it was a bit of both. But the Formica counters were warped front to back, and one was thicker than the other, so we decided we’d go with some butcher block counters.
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I made the first miter, then sat that slab on 2x4s to scribe it to the other slab.
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I had to square up my track saw blade and re-cut each miter. I still need to do some adjustment, some in the drywall, some with a hand plane to create an under cut. I’ll route in some recesses for counter bolts to help pull the gap closed when I glue them up, also add some biscuits for alignment.
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The final fitting
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Also framed supports for the coffee bar.
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Used some wood strips and hot glue to make a template and get the shape of the top close.
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Got it really close, but have a few wall dings to patch.
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Vaughn McMillan said:
Looking real good, Darren. :thumb:

Fortunately, you know a pretty good drywall guy. :D
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Comment reminds me of a process that unethical builders use to get more out of the contractors. The builders would get a person to go in at night after the finial coat of paint is put on and "Spotlight" the walls. followed by their company drywall-er spackling all the dings. You could have hundreds of them.
I was estimating a new housing project to get the painting contract and a buddy said you need to go in after dark to see the job of the previous painting contractor. Hundreds of Spackle touch-ups on beautiful finished walls. My friend said the painter walked out with out his finial payment. Next day I went back to the main office , spoke to the owner. I laid into her. After that she had a very difficult time finding any painting contractors to work for her.
 
Darren Wright said:
Over the past year I’ve been working on taking down the the little house here on the farm. Our goal was to remodel the main house first, but after a lot of back and forth over what we can/should do while my wife’s grandfather is still here, we’ve made zero progress. Mostly we’d be sinking a bunch of money into some band aids that we’d just redo when we gut the house and update everything. We also don’t want to add additional stress to her grandpa, which will be turning 101 this year.

Ultimately we want friends and family to visit us on the farm, and we need a place to live (other than the camper) as we remodel. So we’ve been thinking about building the guest house now, where the little house used to sit.

The old foundation looks to be in good condition, but I plan to have a new slab poured over the old level things out and give us a good base to build on.
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I’ve been digging out the back wall, which we’ll put a retaining wall in to keep the hillside in place. I’ve still got a bit more dirt to remove, but getting close to starting plumbing layout. The side with the plumbing used to have a crawl space. It will get filled in with stone. I have a small section of concrete to remove for the bath plumbing.
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For the building, we’re looking at the Menards garage kit. Their design site lets you choose the options and do the layout to your needs.
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Overall the slab will be a little over 20’ x 20’ with a deck on the front and shed roof over the deck.
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Anyway, I’ve gone back and forth on using the old foundation, but in the end, it’s been here over 100 years, so I feel like it’s going to be ok.
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I meant to ask ages ago but... I was wondering if you were going to use the little cubby hole next to the bedroom closet and behind the bathroom as a water heater closet? Or are you going with a tankless water heater?
 
Mike Stafford said:
I meant to ask ages ago but... I was wondering if you were going to use the little cubby hole next to the bedroom closet and behind the bathroom as a water heater closet? Or are you going with a tankless water heater?
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Yeah, it’s the closet on the right here, a mechanical/storage closet. We went with a tankless LP water heater.
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Today, I got the miters for the counters trued up a bit. also cut the hole for the sink.
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I did some biscuit joints for the corners and routed in recesses for the corner clamps.
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I got the first coat of poly on (going with oil based poly and wax).
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My wife came up and did the first coat of paint on the cabinets. She decided on a color that matches the exterior color for the cabinets. I moved the tops back over tonight, but tomorrow I'll do the corner clamps and will sand and do a couple more poly coats. In a few days I'll set the sink, then wax.
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While waiting on the first coat of poly to set, I worked on adding aluminum brick moulding trim to the entry door. may pickup some more metal trim for the flat areas of the jamb, though this door really doesn't see much weather at all, so paint may do.
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I'll be adding the same white trim to the shop entry door and a trim in black to the new garage entry and pottery studio doors.
 
I bought this sink about 10 years ago for the laundry room in our last house, obviously I never installed it.
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The clips to install it kept coming off when I tried tightening them. So since I already put a pretty good bead of silicone around under the rim, I decided to weigh it down until the silicone cured. I’ve got some different clips on order, hopefully it will stay put for the weekend.
 
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